Trafficking Activist Quits Charity Amid Questions on History

Somaly Mam, one of the world’s best-known advocates fighting human trafficking, resigned from her foundation Wednesday following an inquiry into allegations that she exaggerated claims about her past and stories of rescuing girls from sex slavery, NBC News reports.

Ms. Mam rose to global prominence in the mid-2000s after publishing an autobiography detailing what she said was more than a decade of forced prostitution in her native Cambodia and her subsequent work helping young women escape from the sex trade.

Long-circulating allegations that Ms. Mam had embellished her story and those of women she claimed to have saved led the Somaly Mam Foundation to hire an outside law firm to investigate her personal history. Her departure came a week after Newsweek published a cover story on the questions about her life.

The foundation funds several groups that fight trafficking. Executive Director Gina Reiss-Wilchins said in a statement that the organization is “extremely saddened” by Ms. Mam’s departure but “remain grateful [for] Somaly’s work over the past two decades and for helping to build a foundation that has served thousands of women and girls” and raised awareness of the international sex trade.